As the founder/director of the Nigerian participatory media agency MIND (www.mindng.org), Ilse van Lamoen produced and directed many films with a social cause, including the award winning 55 minute documentary 'Daughters of the Niger Delta' (https: http://www.daughtersofthenigerdelta.org/). This bottom-up film – captured by 9 young women from the heart of the Nigeria who had never held a camera in their lives before - was displayed at 25 film festivals across the globe where it won 6 international awards and distinctions. As a Dutch civil society professional trained in Political Science (MA cum laude), Ilse rolled into filmmaking during two participatory media projects implemented by her organization MIND: FEMSCRIPT and Daughters of the Niger Delta. These two projects were devised to shed light on the human rights conditions of women in the Niger Delta, who at the time were glaringly absent in many human rights, media, and policy reports published about the region. Rather than bringing in external researchers and documentary makers to document the human rights conditions of women, the project trained local women to do so themselves.

While initially, Ilse was primarily in charge of the overall management of these projects, she ended up directing “Daughters of the Niger Delta” because the Nigerian participants weren't satisfied with the framing of key messages in the final cut delivered by the European editors . As the budget was running low, Ilse decided to get her own hands dirty in directing and editing the film – and discovered her new passion. After the successful launch of Daughters of the Niger Delta, Ilse produced and directed several sensitization films commissioned by partners like UNICEF (short films on Violence Against Children), Search for Common Ground (Tomorrow is a New Day), and Nigeria's former Minister of the Economy and Finance Ms. Okonjo Iweala (GWIN Movies). She also managed a range of advocacy projects that used films as tools to expose deficiencies in public services and push for policy changes, such as WATCH and FAST.

After her family's recent move to the Netherlands, Ilse seeks to establish herself as an independent documentary maker in Europe. The proposed project “Tyna” is the first in a range of creative documentaries that Ilse aims to make about people with “boundary-crossing” identities who do not conveniently fit into any of our societal boxes.